Down this road and past this volcanic activity: A 140 year old very isolated little inn just below the cloud line. Like many of these places it seemed to have been renovated during boom years of the 70's and nothing much has happened since. The outside of these places can look very run down indeed but the inside of the rooms are usually well maintained. Also the average age of the staff seemed to be about 85. Great stuff really. Three hot spring pools two outside and one a steaming rockpool of sulphurous water by a pretty stream.
Dinner for two. As you can see it is quite generous. Many mountain vegetables, river fish, etc etc. Served in your room and for the set price. Such places usually cost about $150 per night per person and included everything except drinks.
And then this is breakfast or at least part of it. Speaking of breakfast we had that in a communal room with the other guests, about 7 of us in all. Including a farmer, his wife and 95 year old mother who had been evacuated from the radiation zone and were living 3 to a room in temporary housing somewhere down in the valley. They had come for a night's break from it all. He had a lot of interesting information about what is going on.
His mother, born in 1917, good heavens, was a sharp as a tack and very cheery considering everything. I wanted to take her photo, but chickened out. The reason I wanted the photo was during breakfast she was happily seated next to the marvellous object below. It is about 2 meters tall and Tomono tells me it is a fertility symbol, I would never have guessed.
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